Welcome to the world’s lamest lads’ holiday. You packed your bag, bright-eyed and brimming with adventure, telling your boss at your dead-end desk-meat call centre: “Stick your job, I’m off to the Pacific with Bear Grylls! Woohoo!”

Fast forward a bit and you’re getting off the boat. A gruff northern bloke is barking at you to march, single file, down a poisonous-looking river. Mr Grylls is nowhere to be seen. There’s not a croissanterie in sight and you’re trying not to cry.

This is Channel Four’s The Island with Bear Grylls, which dumps 13 men on an uninhabited island to see if they can survive. Except, the title is slightly misleading, no?

Bear has lent his name to this show in the hope some of his manliness rubs off on it, so to speak. But it soon becomes apparent Bear’s not grubbing about in the mangrove swamps with the boys but has swanned straight off home. He’s a bit busy, see, having a Wild Weekend with Stephen Fry, Jonathan Ross and Miranda Hart (though not all at the same time) as you can see Thursday nights on Channel Four (aka the Bear Grylls fan club channel).

“Have British men lost the skills that were once handed down from father to son?” asks the rhetorical Bear, in a talking head piece-to-camera.

Errrr, ‘yes’ would be my answer. We have lighters now, mate: they’re about 70p a pop from any newsagent and don’t necessitate 18 hours rubbing sticks together while crying.

Bear doesn’t want my answer, though. He’ll be back “at the end of the experiment” to see how everyone is holding up. Which is good of him.

Of course, this is a Man Thing. Unlike numerous sun, sea and sexual frustration shows on Channel Four in the past, this one is for penis-owners only. Women are neither seen nor mentioned, except when Cardiff leakage engineer Craig, 26, confesses his mum does ‘pretty much everything for him’. However, Mum’s not here to serve up barbecued scorpion, which was the only food consumed throughout the first episode. I hope Mum is having a nice break and a good laugh at Craig and the gang going a bit Lord of the Flies, which is of course what we’re all waiting for.

All the men are astonishingly, deliberately normal on the surface and set about bonding, man-style. One minute it’s polite introductions, the next it’s comparing the rusty colour of their wee.

They’ve had a day’s survival training (I know: that’s cheating!) and have to survive “on their instincts”, which inspires glee at first. “I’m a hairdresser, and look at me now!” says image-conscious Dean while flailing at a mangrove bush with a machete.

At least he’s cheerful, though, unlike call centre worker Ryan, 21.

Ryan has lank strawberry blonde hair and the pallid glow of an underground mushroom.

He quickly gets on with his mission of ‘finding himself’, which means tearfully revealing a swastika tattoo to his new band of brothers (who are, to a man, unbothered) and looking increasingly stressed, sweaty and miserable.

As the team jump for joy at discovering a sandy beach and embark on two minutes of unalloyed pleasure at taking a naked dip in the sea, just like any other Brits abroad, Ryan is still whingeing and flopping about pathetically. But when one bloke emerges, stung on the face by a jellyfish, he ‘mans up’.

“I’ll pee on your face,” says Ryan, brightening up. Step aside, Bear: here’s your hero. Tune in next Monday (9pm, C4) and hopefully Ryan will be holding a conch and smiting his opponents with boulders. Or maybe just crying.